Editor’s note: congratulations to MTN on their 2026 Oracle Excellence Awards! MTN won the Finance and Supply Chain category and was a finalist in the Data Analytics and AI category.
Founded in 1994 during South Africa’s democratic transition, MTN Group has grown into Africa’s largest mobile network, with over 300 million subscribers, offering telecommunications, data solutions, financial technology, and digital services to help bridge the digital divide and further financial inclusion. The company is one of Oracle’s largest customers in Africa and is deploying Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications and Oracle Analytics to standardize business processes across operations.
MTN’s purpose is rooted in Africa’s potential, positioning the group as a champion for connecting people and services, enabling participation in the digital economy, and contributing to UN Sustainable Development Goals. Through ongoing investment in infrastructure, networks, ICT-focused education, and entrepreneurship support, MTN expands connectivity to rural and underserved areas while driving socio‑economic development.
MTN has also launched Project Zero, a program to achieve net zero emissions by 2040, using advanced technologies and partners to improve energy efficiency, reduce emissions, manage risk, and control cost.
Standardizing analytics and business processes
MTN has partnered with Oracle for many years, leveraging Oracle technology across finance, HR, supply chain, and analytics as a strategic backbone for the group’s transformation. Arun Kumar, Global Lead – Supply Chain Excellence, MTN, articulated how these solutions support the group’s operational and supply chain agenda.
“I work with a multidisciplinary team spanning Group Finance Information Systems, Enterprise Performance Management, Business Intelligence, and Supply Chain Excellence,” Kumar said. “My objective is to drive a unified development and support function for Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications across MTN’s operating companies.”
This team is responsible for the extension of standardized group-wide analytics and business processes in supply chain, working capital management, and intercompany processes. It’s currently leading a major technology transformation to implement standardized Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications in all MTN entities, which is already completed in six countries and two group managing companies.
From transactional BI to AI-driven analytics
Initially, MTN reported on Oracle Fusion Applications data using Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI) and custom solutions built in Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC). Kumar noted, “This approach met business needs but created technical debt and complexity in managing integrations, data models and decision tables over time.”
The introduction of Fusion AI Data Platform (formerly Fusion Data Intelligence) provided MTN with prebuilt, cloud-native analytic applications that blend OAC’s AI-powered capabilities with best practice metrics and domain content. FAIDP offers MTN a highly curated, structured analytic framework that was immediately usable and has redirected focus from low-level integration and schema concerns to data quality, governance, and KPI standardization.
MTN has realized three major benefits from FAIDP:
- Diminished on-premises technical debt: FAIDP’s low deployment effort means analytics are ready-to-use, reducing accumulated on-premises technical debt and enabling a “clean, preconfigured, best-in-class” environment that clearly distinguishes pre-built content from MTN’s extensions.
- Reduced learning time and rapid reuse: Advanced features in OAC—such as machine learning, data flows, and data preparation—are available in FAIDP. Kumar explained, “It reduced our learning time and allowed rapid reuse of our existing OAC assets to expand analysis from the outset.”
- Efficient data integration: FAIDP’s well-defined data model and extensibility framework make it easier to integrate 3rd party and operational data within the application, rather than directly in Oracle Fusion Applications, accelerating time to value and avoiding contention with transactional workloads.
Standardization, working capital, and intercompany processes
MTN is working towards standardizing finance, employee, contracting, EPM, and core supply chain systems on Oracle Cloud. Kumar explained, “It simplifies the establishment of consistent business practices. Consistency makes it easier for us to obtain cross-functional insights, which supports the evolution of our three major business lines: core connectivity (GSM and mobile), MoMo (mobile money and insurance) and Bayobab (fiber and communications platforms).”
As these three businesses are carved out within multiple countries, a common cloud platform helps manage workforce splits, cost allocations, and structural complexity. Kumar shared that for supply chain, “FAIDP enables us to improve working capital management by standardizing metrics such as days inventory outstanding, days payable outstanding, and days sales outstanding, and by providing drilldown visibility from group KPIs to specific inventory, suppliers, and payment term drivers. We’ve already seen a measurable improvement in cash conversion cycles, with multiple operating companies showing improvement in DIO, DPO, and DSO. Our target is to improve Net Working Capital by 3–5% and accelerate cash release.”
FAIDP’s well-defined data model and cross entity views also support more transparent and efficient management of intercompany transactions, including transfer pricing, cross border services, and stock movements. MTN can do faster reconciliations and it reduces manual effort in period-end close.
Resilience during crises
Where Oracle prebuilt analytic applications are not available, particularly when business analysis is needed on data from outside Fusion Applications, Kumar and his team continue to benefit from being able to build AI-enabled custom solutions with OAC and Oracle Autonomous AI Lakehouse. MTN have created an analytic application, The Nerve Center, which allows them to respond more quickly to supply chain disruptions—such as semiconductor shortages, geopolitical tensions, logistics bottlenecks—by providing near-time visibility into supplier risk, inventory exposure, and alternative options. That’s helped MTN maintain service to 300+ million customers with minimal disruption.
Freight optimization
Managing the largest communications network in Africa involves shipping a lot of equipment. Analytics on 2,500 containers and 15.5 million USD in annual freight spend have enabled better carrier selection, route optimization, and mode of transport decisions. Kumar explained, “By correlating freight data with route specific volumes and costs, we have identified opportunities to consolidate shipments, negotiate better rates, and shift volumes between faster but more expensive modes (air) and slower but cheaper modes (sea or rail).”
Customs and trade compliance
Combining global trade management data with customs data has given MTN a consolidated view of duties owed, opportunities to optimize duty treatment (originating materials, tariff classification, free trade agreement eligibility) and compliance risks.
Kumar commented, “Across the group, we’ve identified 330 million USD in customs duty optimization opportunities and cost management benefits. This improved visibility has reduced duty-related surprises and penalties.”
Procurement and contract efficiency
MTN relies on 500+ key suppliers and manages up to 6,700 contracts, creating 20,000 sourcing transactions annually. Consolidating the data into a single analytics layer enables the organization to track agreement utilization, identify off-contract and non-PO leakage, and measure procurement team productivity (cycle times, cost per transaction, compliance rates). Kumar commented, “With this insight, our target is to realize 2–5% additional savings and reduce procurement cycle time by 20–30%.”
Inventory optimization and cash release
To efficiently maintain the network, MTN carries 2.8 billion USD in inventory across 50 warehouses spread throughout Africa. Analytics enabled MTN to identify slow moving and excess stock, enabling redeployment to areas of higher demand and reduction of non-moving inventory. Kumar explained, “By maintaining inventory close to where it’s needed, we estimate we’ve achieved up to 5 million USD in cash release through better inventory positioning and reduced carrying costs, with materially improved inventory turns in some pilot markets.”
Circular economy and sustainability
In support of MTN’s broader objective to be net-zero for emissions by 2040, they use analytics to track equipment reuse, resale value, avoided emissions, and e-waste diversions. Kumar commented, “Under Project Infinity, we have specific targets to achieve measurable Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) outcomes: 7,911 tCO2e emissions avoided and 1,109 tons of e-waste diverted from landfills. These create revenue and cost avoidance benefits for MTN too: 3.5 million USD in capex savings from reuse, 55 million USD potential resale value from recovered materials. It’s a win-win—good for the environment and good for business.”
Innovation, AI, and the future
Kumar and his team value the rapid innovation cycles of Oracle Cloud, both applications and technology, including regular releases. “It supports a culture of continuous improvement rather than static, one-off implementations. In cloud, we can experiment with new ideas at lower cost of failure because capabilities can be tried, evaluated, and rolled back or refined without heavy upfront investment.”
To fully exploit AI, MTN recognizes the need for rich, clean, well-organized data – a single source of truth where emerging AI technologies can be tested and refined. Over time, more and more data will be migrated to FAIDP, including the data from the Nerve Center.
Kumar added, “We also need to educate business users on how to ask questions that ML and AI tools can answer effectively. In supply chain analytics, AI and machine learning are particularly valuable for identifying late shipments, defaulters and patterns that inform supplier selection, stock strategies and risk mitigation.”
Looking ahead, Kumar plans to use Oracle Cloud Applications and Oracle Analytics and AI to drive data quality, expand self-service analytics, strengthen working capital and intercompany insights, and to help execute strategic objectives such as preventative maintenance on GSM towers and enabling broader operational resilience. In his view, Oracle provides both the technology solutions and strategic partnership that together help MTN achieve its mission to bridge the digital divide with smarter, more resilient operations across Africa.
Learn More
Learn more about MTN’s analytics journey in Arun Kumar’s guest post, MTN supply chain excellence with Oracle Analytics and AI, and you can always ask questions in the Oracle Analytics and AI Community.